Becoming Human Again - The Call

There will come a time when humanity will choose to go against nature, to exploit her bounteous gifts, causing a sickness across the planet. People will forget the ecstasies of communion, and life will become drab and colorless.

In these coming dark ages, though, a deep sense of loss will cause the beginnings of a Great Return. They will look at the landscape and the old temples, built to withstand the cataclysms of millennia and understand once again the sacred laws of Existence.

When this day comes, humanity will have come of age. It will consciously acknowledge its role in the creative impulse that comes from the Sun, fertilizes the Earth, and calls forth the flame in the hearts of men and women to worship Life and the miraculous forces behind Creation.

Miller, Hamish & Broadhurst, Paul. The Sun and the Serpent: An Investigation into Earth Energie

The Sleeper Awakes - Your Hero's Journey                    

This website is a kind of a book. It is an adventure story where I will tell stories of real people - they may be about you - as they go on The Hero's Journey. This, like all real hero's journeys is a voyage home. It will be about how a group of pioneers reject the world we live in today and set off to rediscover the way of living that fits our nature and that fits nature best.

I hope to show you that a life of adventure is availabe to us all if we choose it. All children know this to be true.

When I was a boy I yearned for a life of adventure. But, like most of us, I realized soon enough that adventure was to be found only in books. By my late teens, I, like most of us, turned away from adventure and magic and became a "realist".

But my friends, never before has mankind faced such dark forces as we face now. We need heroes for never before have we faced such a dread and terrible Dark Lord. "What is Rob talking about?' you might say. "There is no Dark Lord. There are lots of problems in the world but no Dark Lord. There are lots of bad people in the world but no Dark Lord. Dark Lords only exist in stories!"

But there is a Dark Lord. It is an idea.

This idea governs our sense of reality. Its defense is that we cannot see him. Its power over us is a story that is so deeply held, that we think of it not as a story but as reality. Its story is that we are separate from nature. Its story is that we are inanimate parts of a machine controlled by a few engineers.

For a long time this story worked but now it has become our problem. Our disconnection from Nature and from our Human Nature threatens the planet and prevents us from finding a solution to any of the symptoms of failure that confront us.

This failed story is at the heart of all our dysfunction. Defeat this idea and there is hope. But how to defeat it?

Many have seen its truth already. Many have have railed against it. It is not news that this disconnect from Nature and from our Human Nature is threatening the planet. Exposing this idea. Talking about it. Attacking its anointed ones. Protesting that we should be different has only given it more power. How to defeat it?I t is after all only a story so I believe that only a new story can defeat it. Where is this "Ring of Truth", that can give us back hope?

It is to be found perversely not in some spiritual practice but in the worldly practice of using a new set of technology. For part of our nature as humans is that we have evolved to evolve, not by changing our bodies, but by changing our culture. We do this by changing our prevailing technological tool set. We then embody this tool set in our very being. It shapes us and becomes our story. Fire was the first and most powerful of these technological embodiments.

The story that threatens us was born of a new technology. In the face of a desperate environmental crisis and a food shortage that occurred 10,000 years ago, humans reluctantly gave up living off the bounty of nature and took up a new living by using and controlling nature. In so doing, we not only domesticated some plants and animals but we also domesticated ourselves. For the price of a regular meal, most people became serfs. Most people today still are serfs. But, considering the circumstances, maybe it was the best deal we could have done at the time.

The wheel of time has now come full circle.

Now we once again face a desperate environmental crisis. Our food supply and our energy supply are in question. Just as our ancestors found, if we do not find a new way of living, we will have no future. The good news is that a new way of living is rapidly emerging. Once again, our ingenuity has thrown up a new tool set that paradoxically will enable us to change every aspect of how and where we live. It is of course the web and its most important child, Social Software. The pace of its development has been dazzling.

The web barely existed in 1995, the year that the first browser appeared. Now the web is becoming central to all organized activity. Social Software barely existed in 1998. In 2010 there will be 100 million bloggers. Gaming is becoming a new way of living for those in Second Life and World of Warcaft. Soon the boomers will retire and their children for how this new interactive and community based world is their norm will inherit.

I am not saying that the web or social software are themselves the way - the journey is up to us as humans. But it will help us get there by providing us better alternatives to the old way.

The issue is not the technology itself but its power to change us once we have used it. I believe that the Web and Social Software has the power to change the consciousness of mankind.

It is giving those in bondage to the old idea a voice and so it is giving them power. Power is shifting from institution to community. Honor and reputation are coming back. Community and Tribe are coming back. Allowing things to grow is coming back. Already it is clear that those enterprises that use natural principles are decisively defeating traditional alternatives.

But you don't have to believe me. I hope to show you.

That is my intent in this Space. I intend to say only a little of what I believe to be the new observed truth. I intend to show you the stories of other people's actions so that you too can see the truth with your own eyes. For just as there is indeed a Dark Lord, so there are real heroes right now. They live not in books or on film but next door to you.

Of course we need ideas to help us make the change. But we need hope and we need courage and we need support to make a life changing move.  Was it not the stories of the pioneers in America that called millions from a feudal life to the opportunity to become their true selves in 19th century America? Was it not then the steam ships and the trains that caused the trickle to become a flood? Will it not be the stories of our pioneers in our new world that will call to the rest of us. Will it not be the new tools that will cause the trickle to become a flood?

So this is my hope - to show you the lives of the pioneers in the new/old connected world in the hope that their lives will call you too to adventure and to the co-creation of a better world. The wonders of the web allow me to offer more. It allows me to offer you a real connection to the people behind the stories. You can help them and they you.

As I develop Trusted Space, you will see that it will have three parts.

In this Central Space I will offer up my best shot at what I feel are the few big ideas of how to do your best in this new but ancient way of living. It will be the Coles Notes of the ideas. My regular readers may have seen these ideas before. My apologies in advance.

The doorway to the novelty to the fun and to the power of the site will be found in the links on the left hand side of the site. This is the Story Gateway. Here you will find links to related sites that will have titles such as Work, Family, Energy, Food, War & Conflict, Health and Education and so on.

Each of these links will take you to a site where you will find stories of people who today are discovering and living a new life of interconnection with nature.  You will meet some wonderful people in these stories. Most of the people in these stories are just regular folks, Hobbits really, who have left the comfort of the Shire and are on the road to Mordor with a Ring of Truth and a few close friends.  A few are Wizards like Gandalf and a few are Knights who are questioning whether to take hold of their sword of destiny. All have a mythic role but all are real.

I will start the site with only a few stories. There is only me here. But it is my hope that by this summer there will be a foundation in each category and that the links between all can be seen.

Some stories will come from my friends who live all over the world. But many of the stories will come from PEI - my home. I hope that you will learn to love my home and these people as I do. For their story is of course yours as well. No society could be more vulnerable in the west as we are and so, if we can do it, well then so can you.

You will see on the right side of the page, the Mind Side of the Site. This series of Links will offer many of the same categories but here you will find access to research and to many books that offer the foundation of the science and the observed truth behind the stories. There are so many wonderful people that you have maybe never heard of that have been labouring for a lifetime to explore, in their field, the new truth. Many, being scientists or specialists, know nothing of each other and I look forward to making some connections here. Many have of course been persecuted as heretics. Some have died professionally as a result. Some have died of a broken heart. All have paid the price of being a pioneer.

I look forward to introducing you to people such as Michael Marmot, Christopher Alexander, Col. John Boyd, Brian Hall, David Brown and Andrew Clarke, Doug Wilms and to my other father Fraser Mustard. My aha has been that each of these pioneers has been telling the same story but unknown to each other. What fun I expect as the links are made between them.

Also on the Mind side of the site you will find the "Garden Shed". Humans are tool builders and it is our tools that shape our culture and how we live. Here I intend to offer the best set of tools that we know work well that help us see what is going on culturally and that help us design and implement a more human and natural environment so that we can indeed become more human again.

This is itself an organic work. The stories will unfold as I am able to do the interviews and to transcribe them. I may go off on tangents as I learn more myself and as you tell me more. So the site will begin only sparsely populated. But my hope is that, by the summer of 2007, it will be full enough for the truth to be clear - that we can know and trust our new story and hence we can set out on our journey home.

....... we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the heropath. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world." Joseph Campbell - The Hero's Journey

Comments

[Chris]

Aren't beginnings wonderful?

Here's wishing you and your readers great success with this new venture!

/Chris

[Jon Husband]

Here's to trust and space and helping things along whilst doing no harm.

May the fair winds be at your back.

[Robert Paterson]

Thanks Chris and Jon
Best wishes to you as well in your work
Rob

[Gillette]

I loved the passion in your writing here.

When reading, I kept being reminded of a movie that my children used to watch (and which I pull out from time to time) called "The Neverending Story." In there, this Dark Lord of which you speak is referred to as "The Nothing." The original movie is quite delightful and one I highly recommend.

Good luck in this journey from the Heart. Blessings!

[Robert Paterson]

Our kids and I loved that movie too.

I think that there is a lot of truth in fantasy and in myth. In fact there may be more truth than in fact.

I am interviewing an English prof who had to bring on a new course about myth because he found that his students could only understand the surface.

Many very succesful films today Matrix, LOR, Pan's Labrynth etc are successful I think because speak to our yearning to make a difference in a dangerous time

[Catmoves]

I guess I'm late again, but, oh well. (Referring to the dates of your posts and comments.)
Even this old curmudgeon liked Never Ending, too.
I fear that human kind (American style) is rushing hell bent for destruction. It may be able to stop the descent, but somebodies need to grab that brake handle now and pull with all their might.
I am, of course, looking at this post more than a year after it was written.

[Lee]

yes, we are MORE and BETTER when unified. in fact it all unravels when we are not.